APODEICTIC

This term was borrowed by Kant from Aristotle (Analyt. Prior., lib.
I. cap. 1),
who, restricting the work of demonstration, made a distinction between
propositions which admitted of contradiction or dialectic discussion, and such
as were the basis or result of demonstration. Kant introduced an analogous
distinction between our judgments, giving the name of apodeictic to such as
were above all contradiction, or were necessary and universal, the
a priori
conditions of experience, as opposed to those which are contingent on the result
of experience.

Adamson, art.'' Logic," Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed., states
the distinction thus:—"The one rests on principles essential, necessary; seen
to be true, while the other proved from data which are merely received as
credible, and as containing probable, received opinions on a subject about which
there may be difference of view; and, it may be added, that in the one we reach
conclusions which are essential, in which the predicate is necessarily and
universally true of the subject, while in the other the conclusion remains, like
the data, credible merely, and is, at best, only one of the probable
answers to a question." Thus, "apodeictic knowledge deals with the universal and
necessary, that which is now and always, that which cannot be other than it is,
that which is what it is simply through its own nature. It is the expression of
the true universal in thought and things,
τὸ καθόλον."